Rosetta will wake up to discover the secrets of comets - TF1

After traveling 7 billion miles, it finally reached his goal. Rosetta will orbit around the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko next May. Hibernation here two and a half years, it must first “wake up” to slowly approach the celestial body. This automatic alarm is set Monday (January 20) at 10am GMT (11am in Paris). The probe was launched in 2004 by the European Space Agency (Esa) has the ambition to wrest its secrets to the comet that it will have 10 years to reach. “From May, the probe will begin intense activity mapping icy comet nucleus,” the National Centre for Space Studies (CNES), to determine the best area to drop its lander Philae in November. The probe and its small module feature a total of 21 instruments.
Rosetta must remain 18 months in orbit to explore the properties of the comet’s internal structure and composition of its surface. If this mission is successful, it will be a world first, because so far only the debris fell to Earth comets were studied. This will trace the evolution of the solar system from its birth as “Comets are time capsules of the birth of the solar system,” summed up Mark McCaughrean, head of ESA space exploration, cited by AFP.
back 4.6 billion years ago

“Open these capsules watching the gas, dust and ice especially composing is get some great clues about the origin of our solar system and perhaps even life, since comets contain organic molecules , “he explains. Comet lived billions of years in the space deep, until a passing near Jupiter radically changes its orbit in 1959. In other words, the comet has hardly been degraded by the rays of the Sun and his testimony about the universe promises to be particularly readable. In other words, summarizes the scientific Esa, “the capsule remained locked for 4.6 billion years, it is time to open the treasure chest”.
Rosetta true mission of “space archeology” is named after the Rosetta Stone, this fragment of stele bearing the same text in three different languages, which enabled Champollion to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs in the early nineteenth century.

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